Mother-Daughter Scam Artists

It’s hard to imagine that mother and dauther teams were scamming business owners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1893.  That’s the kind of thing I thought only happened today and not so much with businesses but in divorce cases.  The mother is always right and the father is always pond-scum.  Pond-scum that ends up paying everything they have to visit with their children who will probably grow up to hate him because the children have been primarily raised by pain-killer addict mothers who teach the kids that their fathers are worthless.  And if that doesn’t work let’s tell the courts he raped you….but I digress.  It happened in Chicago, New York, Boston and San Francisco – Jennie Freeman and her daughter Fannie pretended to be hit by cable cars, trucks (like the one in the photo) and horse drawn carriages.  Doctors for the rail line companies they would sue for damages would call on the scammers and examine their so-called injuries.  Often times Jennie would claim Fannie was paralyzed.  The company hired doctors couldn’t figure out how they always made their symptoms seem so real.  It wasn’t until a private detective rented an apartment above the Freeman’s place in Chicago that the truth was learned.  Through a hole in the floor the investigator spied on his downstairs neighbors.  He caught them soaking their feet in freezing cold water.  Jennie and Fannie would leave their feet in the water until they became numb.  The company doctor would arrive after the water treatment and when he examined their limbs of course mother and daughter couldn’t feel a thing.  The private investigator exposed their scam and the women went to jail.  That’s how it should be when liars are exposed.  Now of days we just let them go free so they can pretend to be victims.  Jennie and Fannie were eventually shot and killed by unknown assailants.  Authorities suspected the men who shot them were hired gunmen working for the rail lines.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.